South Dakota Hemp 2018: Beware Bills HB-1204 & SB-205

South Dakota farmers want hemp, but the legislators want to give it control to the big corporations. Hemp legislation like this is damaging to the American farmer. Making hemp “Designated an oil-seed” crop in the legislative language is an attempt to control the plant. When legislation defines what a plant can be used for, ALARMS should be going off, as this is anti-American and prevents the American farmer from thriving. Currently, 98% of value is the CBD extractions, not the seed oil, and to keep the prices artificially high, lawyers and lobbyists representing CBD extraction/sales companies in other states are influencing bills like this to prevent others from entering the market. We see evidence of this in Washington, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states.
The people making money on “Certified seed” pushing that provision don’t have a CBD cultivar which is certified, hence it’s an “oil-seed crop.” It is critical to understand that Certified seed in hemp is a corporate control mechanism, it is NOT to benefit the farmer or the development of the industrial hemp industry. This is similar to how Monsanto manipulates seed and tells the farmer that they CAN’T save seed. This is an abomination to the suitability to humans.

Legislation like this is taking away the ability for farmers to develop better seed for their region and gives the money to FOREIGN corporations. Farmers are not allowed to save seed, which is against what nature intended. There would be No intellectual property developed by and for farmers, which is a complete loss for the people in the state of South Dakota.

Charging fees of $40 per acre is placing a barrier to most farmers and only enabling manipulation by companies trying to control this crop.

The language doesn’t state “plants living or not,” so its jurisdiction once harvested is unclear, a strict reading would be jurisdiction ends at harvest.

Mandatory fingerprinting of farmers for this oil-seed crop. Can you imagine having to get a fingerprint background check to get access to water?!? Unfortunately, this is the prevalent pattern over the past decades. Can’t allow any so called “criminals” working in America, unless they are petro-industry, politicians or bankers.

A major control mechanism is to control the seed. Certified seed will only be allowed, which means control of the market by mostly Canadian and European companies. Another major issue with this is that we are still in the infancy of development for hemp and there are so many cultivars to learn about and explore.

Some of the background of this bill is interesting and seems to follow a pattern. In research, there is evidence that someone was trying to do the right thing with this bill early on and he wrote language that was simple and removed the restrictions for the American farmer to grow hemp, not add any. Unfortunately, once again it appears that Mr. Lauve’s work has been usurped by the Canadian influenced Hemp Associations. This has been a major concern since long before Colorado first passed hemp legislation with Mr. Lauve and Representative McKinley’s work in 2011-2012 which is one of the few bills that tried to completely free the plant for everyone.

The laws and definitions being implemented are to the benefit of the few and will contribute to the destruction of the American farmer; replaced by the massive multi-national corporations.

Language like this is following in the steps of companies like Monsanto to control seed and manipulate it as they see fit with technology like Glyphosate in Round-Up.

“Only a person licensed to grow or process industrial hemp pursuant to this Act may possess any part, stalk, leaf, bud, flower, or seed of an industrial hemp plant.” Still isn’t clear if this is also post-harvest. Keep in mind that hemp has NEVER been illegal and these attempts to legislate are meant to limit access, not expand it.

The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was created on falsehoods and lies and even the American Medical Association did not want to support the restrictive legislation at the time. Anyone with any basic comprehension of the English language can see that the reasons for making this plant illegal are ALL BUILT ON FEAR AND CONTROL. Everything we are doing now is misleading and just plain wrong.

Even the 1936 Popular Mechanics reported on the HUGE VALUE of HEMP only the year before in 1936. It is so obvious that MONEY wants to control it. Hemp is America’s chance to bring back the community, culture and small towns for the benefit of all the people.

Beware of the restrictions placed on ancillary businesses such as in the South Dakota language, Processors must be licensed.

This approach to legislating a plant is dangerous to the prosperity of all farmers in North, Central and South America.

The most fruitful future of hemp is in developing new genetics for all, not spending public money developing data for foreign for-profit corporations’ benefit. We should encourage breeding of new cultivars using local feral hemp.